Dr. Moerner is the winner
of the 2014 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, and is known for his work on microscopy.

Dr. Moerner explained that a revolution is afoot in the basic sciences,
stemming from tremendous advances in photonics, microscopy, and physical
chemistry.

Honestly, the term “revolution” doesn’t quite capture the magnitude of the
ongoing paradigm shift, which reflects a quest to defy a fundamental property of light.
One might even describe his journey to the Nobel Prize as that of a
scientist challenging the universe, and winning.

So profound and influential
were his contributions that even the creators of the Simpsons* took note,
picking Dr. Moerner as a probable Nobel Prize winner in the 2010 episode “Elementary School Musical.” No kidding – look carefully at Milhouse’s
selection for the Chemistry prize.

Pop-culture references aside, what revolutionary ideas led Dr. Moerner – a student of San Antonio’s own Thomas Jefferson High School – to the Nobel Prize? As it turns out, this revolution is all about
resolution – optical resolution in
microscopy, to be specific.

Dr. Moerner’s insight began with studies of fluorescence (the process by which
excited molecules emit light), and early attempts to use fluorescence to
observe single molecules.

At first, this may not seem ground-breaking,
but consider that our fabric as human beings boils down the intricate
interactions between single molecules – proteins, nucleic acids, carbohydrates
and lipids. If it were possible to study
these components as a dynamic mixture of individual entities, what might we be
able to learn about health and disease?

Initially, many researchers in the physics and chemistry communities didn’t
consider such a feat to be possible. Yet
Dr. Moerner felt differently, and reasoned that the emission of light from a
single molecule could be detected and measured independent of the ensemble of molecules surrounding it.

Deviating from “ensemble averaging” in
measurement could unlock details about the molecular world that were hitherto
hidden in probability distributions.

By isolating and observing individual molecules, it becomes possible to
accurately infer their positions and plot them with a positional uncertainty of
10 nanometers or less. To understand just how impressive this is, consider
that most of our daily activities are conducted at the scale of meters and
kilometers. Now imagine studying
phenomena nearly a billion times smaller, and having the capability to plot all
of those measurements to build an image with nanometer precision.

Welcome to the “nanoscale” world unlocked by “super resolution” microscopy. What are the results of this revolution in
microscopy, you might ask? I encourage
readers to sample some comparisons here:

Essentially, the “blur” created by light diffraction in conventional microscopy
is overcome by plotting the individual locations of molecules; each detected
using the techniques pioneered by Dr. Moerner, as well as Dr. Eric Betzig and Dr. Stefan Hell who shared in the 2014 Nobel Prize for their contributions.

At UTHSCSA, investigators affiliated with our Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences
and Medical School can access to this Nobel-winning technology through the Optical Imaging Core Facilities.

As a
proof of principle, we’ve already used this technology to resolve the
interaction between pairs of proteins in E. coli – the bacterium responsible
for occasional health scares from contaminated food.